By Michael D. Doyle
For The Herald Bulletin
ANDERSON, Ind. —
It was a good day for Anderson’s Chloe Miller and the Pendleton Heights girls team Tuesday at the Anderson Invitational cross-country meet.
Guerin Catholic and Pendleton Heights were closely matched in the team competition, with Guerin placing five runners in the top 10 and Pendleton four.
Pendleton ultimately came out on top, finishing first with a total of 32 points on the strength of second- and fourth-place finishes by Emma Manchess and Chelsea Blackwell. Guerin finished just one point behind to take second.
The individual battle was not so close, as Anderson’s Miller crossed the finish line in 21:17.98, nearly 45 seconds ahead of Manchess to take first place.
“It was a decent race, but I’ve done better times before,” Miller said. “I got off to a quick start, but some of the girls from Pendleton did, too, so that kept me going early on. It wasn’t my fastest, but overall I’m happy with my performance.”
Miller said she was proud of her team‘s performance.
Anderson placed third despite very little recovery time from another recent event.
“We just had a meet Saturday so to come out and do that well today was great. I’m really very proud of everyone,” she said.
Guerin Catholic had a dominating showing in the boys competition, sweeping first through fifth places and putting seven runners in the top 10 for a landslide team victory.
Mark Babbey, who placed first individually with a time of 17:22.45, got off to a quick start, which he said was the deciding factor.
“Last year at this race I came in behind one of the Anderson runners,” he said. “This year I wanted to front-run a little more, so I started off at a really fast pace. I knew it would be tough to stay in front, but I did it.”
The Anderson runner Babbey referred to was Blake Morgan.
Morgan, the first non-Guerin runner to finish the race, provided the most exciting moment of the day when he sped up to close in on an unsuspecting Andrew Elston during the final leg. Blake was unable to make up enough ground and finished sixth, only .2 of a second behind Elston.
“It was nearly a clean sweep,” Guerin assistant coach Jeff Cochran said. “That race for fifth was obviously very close. We set out to win this event, and our team performed up to all of our expectations.”
T.J. Cornell and Paul O’Boyle placed second and third, respectively, for Guerin. Josh Burks and Aaron Hernandon of AHS rounded out the top 10. Anderson finished second with 48 points, far behind Guerin with 15. Liberty Christian, the only other team to compete, finished third with 81.
“It’s always good to win for the team,” Babbey said. “We knew we could do it, because we won it last year, but it was still tough.”
